Association football

Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer,

[1]
is a sport played
between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball. It is played by 250 million players in
over 200 countries, making it the world's most popular sport.
[2][3][4][5]
The game is played on a
rectangular field with a goal at each end. The object of the game is to score by using any part
of the body besides the arms and hands to get the ball into the opposing goal.
The goalkeepers are the only players allowed to touch the ball with their hands or arms while it
is in play and then only in their penalty area. Outfield players mostly use their feet to strike or
pass the ball, but may use their head or torso to strike the ball instead. The team that scores
the most goals by the end of the match wins. If the score is tied at the end of the game, either
a draw is declared or the game goes into extra timeand/or a penalty shootout depending on the
format of the competition. The Laws of the Game were originally codified in England by The
Football Association in 1863. Association football is governed internationally by
the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA; French: Fdration Internationale de
Football Association) which organises a World Cup every four years.
[6]


History
Two of the earliest recorded football type games from Europe
include Episkyros
[7][8]
from Ancient Greece and the Roman version Harpastum,
[7]
which similar
to pre-codified "Mob Football" involved more handling the ball than kicking.
[9]
Other competitive
games revolving around the kicking of a ball have been played in a few countries throughout
history, such as cuju in China.
[10]
Non-competitive games included kemari in Japan
and woggabaliri in Australia. The modern rules of association football are based on the mid-
19th century efforts to standardise the widely varying forms of football played in the public
schools of England. The history of football in England dates back to at least the eighth
century.
[11]

The Cambridge Rules, first drawn up at Cambridge University in 1848, were particularly
influential in the development of subsequent codes, including association football. The
Cambridge Rules were written at Trinity College, Cambridge, at a meeting attended by
representatives from Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester and Shrewsbury schools. They were
not universally adopted. During the 1850s, many clubs unconnected to schools or universities
were formed throughout the English-speaking world, to play various forms of football. Some
came up with their own distinct codes of rules, most notably the Sheffield Football Club, formed
by former public school pupils in 1857,
[12]
which led to formation of a Sheffield FA in 1867. In
1862, John Charles Thring of Uppingham School also devised an influential set of rules.
[13]

These ongoing efforts contributed to the formation of The Football Association (The FA) in
1863, which first met on the morning of 26 October 1863 at the Freemasons' Tavern in Great
Queen Street, London.
[14]
The only school to be represented on this occasion
was Charterhouse. The Freemason's Tavern was the setting for five more meetings between
October and December, which eventually produced the first comprehensive set of rules. At the
final meeting, the first FA treasurer, the representative from Blackheath, withdrew his club from
the FA over the removal of two draft rules at the previous meeting: the first allowed for running
with the ball in hand; the second for obstructing such a run by hacking (kicking an opponent in
the shins), tripping and holding. Other English rugby clubs followed this lead and did not join
the FA and instead in 1871 formed the Rugby Football Union. The eleven remaining clubs,
under the charge of Ebenezer Cobb Morley, went on to ratify the original thirteen laws of the
game.
[14]
These rules included handling of the ball by "marks" and the lack of a crossbar, rules
which made it remarkably similar to Victorian rules football being developed at that time in
Australia. The Sheffield FA played by its own rules until the 1870s with the FA absorbing some
of its rules until there was little difference between the games.
[15]

The laws of the game are determined by the International Football Association
Board (IFAB).
[16]
The Board was formed in 1886
[17]
after a meeting in Manchester of The
Football Association, the Scottish Football Association, theFootball Association of Wales, and
the Irish Football Association. The world's oldest football competition is the FA Cup, which was
founded by C. W. Alcock and has been contested by English teams since 1872. The first
official international football match took place in 1872 between Scotland and England
in Glasgow, again at the instigation of C. W. Alcock. England is home to the world's
first football league, which was founded in Birmingham in 1888 byAston Villa director William
McGregor.
[18]
The original format contained 12 clubs from the Midlands and Northern
England. FIFA, the international football body, was formed in Paris in 1904 and declared that
they would adhere to Laws of the Game of the Football Association.
[19]
The growing popularity
of the international game led to the admittance of FIFA representatives to the International
Football Association Board in 1913. The board consists of four representatives from FIFA and
one representative from each of the four British associations.
[20]

Today, football is played at a professional level all over the world. Millions of people regularly
go to football stadiums to follow their favourite teams,
[21]
while billions more watch the game on
television or on the internet.
[22]
A very large number of people also play football at an amateur
level. According to a survey conducted by FIFA published in 2001, over 240 million people
from more than 200 countries regularly play football.
[23]
Football has the highest global
television audience in sport.
[24]

In many parts of the world football evokes great passions and plays an important role in the life
of individual fans, local communities, and even nations. R. Kapuscinski says that people who
are polite, modest or even humble in Europe fall easily into rage with playing or watching
soccer games.
[25]
The Cte d'Ivoire national football team helped secure a truce to the
nation's civil war in 2006
[26]
and it helped further reduce tensions between government and
rebel forces in 2007 by playing a match in the rebel capital of Bouak, an occasion that brought
both armies together peacefully for the first time.
[27]
By contrast, football is widely considered to
have been the final proximate cause for the Football War in June 1969 between El
Salvador and Honduras.
[28]
The sport also exacerbated tensions at the beginning of
the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, when a match between Dinamo Zagreb and Red Star
Belgrade degenerated into rioting in May 1990.
[29]


Etimology and names
The rules of association football were codified in England by the Football Association in 1863
and the name association football was coined to distinguish the game from the other forms of
football played at the time, specifically rugby football. The term socceroriginated in England,
first appearing in the 1880s as an Oxford "-er" abbreviation of the word "association".
[30]

Within the English-speaking world, association football is now usually called football in the
United Kingdom, and mainly soccer in Canada and the United States. Other countries, such as
Australia, Ireland and New Zealand, may use either or both terms interchangeably.